In the case of ships or vessels having many crew members and passengers on board, safety regulations require that the ship or vessel is equipped with evacuation systems with the capacity to handle a higher number of persons than the actual number of persons on board the ship or vessel.
This is for instance achieved by equipping the vessel with a combination of a plurality of tender boats having a capacity of up to 150 persons, a plurality of lifeboats also having a capacity of up to 150 persons, and a plurality of inflatable life rafts, for instance having a capacity of 35 persons. The number of the various equipment types depends on the number of passengers on board the ship or vessel.
In FIG. 1a, a typical Panamax cruise vessel 1 is shown. The cruise vessel 1 has a length overall (LOA) of 294.0 meters, a width (B) of 32.2 meters and a draught (d) of 8.8 meters. The cruise vessel 1 may have 2672 passengers and 925 crew members on board, in total 3597 persons. Regulations demand that the cruise vessel 1 has evacuation capacity for 4497 persons on board.
In the cruise vessel 1, this is obtained by 6 tender boats 2 of 150 persons providing an evacuation capacity of 900 persons, 12 lifeboats 3 of 150 persons providing an evacuation capacity of 1800 persons and 52 life rafts (not shown) of 35 persons providing an evacuation capacity of 1820 persons, resulting in a total evacuation capacity of 4520 persons.
As shown in FIG. 1, 5 lifeboats 3 occupy the length L1 on the one side, and 5 other lifeboats on the opposite side of the cruise vessel 1 occupy the same length.
Since the tender boats 2 and lifeboats 3 having a capacity of 150 persons each have a considerable size, they occupy much room on the cruise vessel and often on the deck of the cruise vessel, as well as in the height of the vessel.
Furthermore, since the tender boats and lifeboats have a considerable size and thereby weight, the cruise ship or vessel has to be reinforced in the areas where the boats are positioned on the vessel. In addition, due to the sizes and weight of the boats, their deployment also requires large deployment arrangements.
Moreover, the persons to be evacuated in tender boats and lifeboats enter the tender boats and lifeboats when these are on board the ship or vessel, and the tender boats and lifeboats are subsequently lowered (with the persons on board) into the water. During the lowering, the tender boats and lifeboats may experience sudden movements and may also slam into the side of the vessel, which is very unpleasant for the persons in the tender boats and lifeboats. In the worst-case scenario, they may even be injured.